Gabrielle #16 – The Bro Collector
Part one.
I collect men, for some reason. It’s not a conscious thing, it just started happening. I’d meet one on a night out or in a Starbucks or something, we’d fuck, and then bypass the incoherent what are we phase and become friends. The dynamic is totally different to a strictly platonic friendship, or a friendship with someone I’ve dated and it hasn’t worked out, but it’s always the same: the familiarity of a relationship with none of the commitment; the guess-what-just-happened-in-the-toilet abjection of the group chat with an undercurrent of sexual intrigue. You could view it as entering into a never-ending ‘will they, won’t they’ as opposed to swerving the question entirely, but that feels childish. That’s not my future ex, that’s my emotional support guy who fearfully asks if he has “a God complex” at 1AM and sends me lengthy voice notes regarding his business plans.
It’s unfortunate that non-monogamy has been claimed by the most insufferable weirdos alive as a substitute for a personality, because the basic premise is a good one. It’s entirely possible to fuck someone and enjoy their company but not want a full on relationship. There are countless ways to be with people, but as it stands we’re presented with two extremes: monogamy leading to marriage vs nine-person gluten-free polycule with an elaborate flow chart detailing the hierarchy and everyone’s favourite milk.
There’s a vast landscape in between, but it’s a hazardous one. That’s where things are undefined, constantly renegotiating. Where you have to hold multiple feelings in your heart at the same time without rushing towards any of them. It takes a lot of grace to do that. I know I’m being vague, but that’s the point. Uncertainty is exactly what the frameworks of conventional marriage and polyamory – both litigious – are designed to avoid. The more contractual an arrangement becomes, the more it attempts to manage the unmanageable.
It is true that sex can confuse things. Not because there’s anything special about it, but because it can raise questions that create expectations. If it’s good, why not do it more often? At a certain point, what’s the difference between a regular hang out and a hang out that ends with three orgasms? What are we? If we’re hooking up all the time and we get on well, then what’s the problem? Is there something wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?? All that stuff.
But here’s the thing: electric sex and a similar worldview does not a relationship make. A relationship benefits from both of those things, for sure, but you also have to want the same things. You need to have complementary (not matching) mental illnesses, and understand the ways in which the other person needs you and how that might differ from the ways in which you are moved to behave, and the want – not just the willingness – to put yourself aside in order for them to grow, because that’s what love is. All that stuff is more important in terms of longevity, which is why so many people enter into relationships where their sexual appetite is the first and biggest sacrifice. If you’re mad lucky, which I am, you can find it all in one person. But it’s rare.
Sex, like humour, is a type of bonding. It’s not inherently romantic. So for me, it leads into friendships quite organically. If you come at everything with curiosity and an open mind, pleasure and intimacy can exist completely independently from the feeling of actually wanting to wake up next to someone every day (haters will call it “commitment phobia” but I’m a Cancer sun, Sagittarius moon with Venus in Leo so I’m just a divinely appointed lover, sorry!). There can be a romance to these not-really-sexual not-really-relationships, but only in a natural sense. They’re romantic the way the sea is romantic: thrilling, mysterious, remote. But they’re also too unceremonious for all that. Too brotherly. After all, these are guys who call me by my surname.
The establishment fears this, of course, which is why there are almost no on-screen examples of male/female friendships, let alone unconventional ones, and when you search for them you mainly get listicles that point to Finding Nemo.
It’s a shame, because there’s an honesty between people who’ve hooked up but never properly dated that’s worth exploring. A feeling of being truly seen – literally, yes (how much can you really know someone until you’ve stared deep into their arsehole?), but also essentially. If you meet by chance, the assumed fleeting nature of things lowers everyone’s inhibitions. Never gonna see this person again, might as well go off. Ironically this makes you behave more instinctively than you would with someone you’ve spent weeks grafting, which means that if you get on then that’s your bro for life right there.
Even if your crossing of paths is more drawn out, or more fated, no-strings sex allows a form of intimacy that goes beyond the physical. At its best, it’s one of the most mutually respectful dynamics you could hope to have. There’s a special kind of seeing that goes on between people who can have sex and then let each other go. Once, twice, repeatedly. The world is stressful enough without trying to own everyone you like (that’s how cults start). But that doesn’t make it meaningless, either. There’s an interview with the author Gabriel Krauze where he describes his view of masculinity as “the discovery of brotherhood in a dangerous and hostile environment.” That’s pretty much how I feel about sex.
There are people who will argue that mixed heterosexual friendships don’t exist because the guy always lowkey wants to fuck the girl. As if that’s the only direction of desire. As if heterosexual sex is simply an exchange; some precious object that men can only take and women can only give. How bleak. Like, way to strip all the beauty and pleasure from it and reduce it to an encounter with the merchant in Resident Evil.
Of course, it’s possible to find someone attractive and not feel compelled to do anything about it, because simply being attracted to someone doesn’t mean anything – at least not on a purely physical basis. Call me one crazy chica but I think all my friends are hot. They’re cool, charismatic people. That’s literally why we’re friends. And if someone is cool and charismatic, how could they not be hot? Use your head! But that’s besides the point.
The answer to whether men and women can be friends, unless you’re fucking stupid, is yes. But it’s a dishonest question to begin with. What’s really being asked is: can two people be friends when there’s desire involved? And the answer to that is slightly more complicated, but still yes.
Desire is everywhere, especially where it goes unaddressed, which is why it seems strange to obliterate it from the conversation of friendship. Desire can be fleeting, literally a half-second, or it can come and go. It isn’t fixed. Sometimes it can upend your life and there will be warning signs if that’s due to happen (mine is that I start having dreams about the person dying, totally normal, don’t worry about it). But it can also just be there. Existing. In one direction or many. You don’t have to speak its name out loud, but why deny it? Someone wanting a go on you… it’s not that scary, is it?
In Practicalities, which I’ve been re-reading recently, Marguerite Duras writes: “It’s between men and women that imagination is at its strongest. And it’s there that they’re separated by a frigidity which women increasingly invoke and which paralyses the men who desire them.” Which is mainly in reference to how a woman’s rejection of one man is often to do with her loyalty to her idea of another, who she hasn’t even met yet (her mind!). She also writes that “heterosexuality is dangerous” because “it tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire.” Which is of course French for: who will match my freak. She doesn’t go as far as to say that low-level mutual desire, where it exists, can be managed (for Duras, it tends to go hand in hand with ruin), but I would.
What I like about these particular friendships with men, my boys, is that they’re honest. As far as sex goes, the question has already been addressed and answered. Do we find each other attractive? Yes. Cool. Now what? Well, now we can do whatever we want with it. What if we had all the rewards of a short-lived relationship without running it into the ground?
I can see how it would appear brutal, on paper, to fuck someone and then go “mmmm yeah, no – you’re cool though, wanna go for lunch on Thursday?” But, actually, I think that’s a) infinitely more trustworthy than someone trying to get close to me under respectful pretences. Nothing strikes fear into my heart more than a guy who has loads of girl mates and hasn’t had sex with any of them. It’s also b) very affirming. A man wants to do activities with me because he thinks I’m awesome, gets me enough to agree that we would make a terrible couple and has already blown my back out so isn’t being creepy about that either? Sound. Keep ‘em coming, thanks.
You do have to be getting something out of them, mind you. Sumptuous banter, rare memes, dubious but well-meaning financial advice. At the very least some good film recommendations. And for that to be the case, I think, you have to actually like men. As Duras puts it:
“Yes, it really is difficult to talk about sex. Before they’re plumbers or writers or taxi drivers or unemployed or journalists, before everything else, men are men. Whether heterosexual or homosexual. The only difference is that some of them remind you of it as soon as you meet them, and others wait for a little while. You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they’re simply unbearable.”
I’m splitting this post into two parts – mainly because it feels deranged to publish over 3000w about how dudes rock in one go, but also because I have to hand the first draft of my book in next month so I’m attempting to provide consistency without killing myself. Pt 2. coming soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to read Pt. 1 again from the male POV, you can do so below (I’m sure the bros would agree that the word count is accurate):
